


Self-Condemning

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [10]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Military Recruitment, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 05:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai was planning on joining the Amestrian military today, but a certain major in the form of a childhood enemy is going to do everything he can to stop that from happening.</p>
<p>
  <i>“But I’m joining the army today.” Somehow, Edward had managed to herd him around the side of the building toward the main gate.</i>
</p>
<p><i>“I could just kill you now. Or preform a lobotomy? It’d probably be faster.” That gave Kai pause. Was </i>Edward Elric <i>against the military?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Condemning

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I may have gotten off schedule a little bit, but I'm back now and should be returning to regular updates! Let me know what you think of this one!

Eighteenth birthdays weren’t supposed to start off with tears, but then again, the tears didn’t belong to Kai, so it didn’t really count. Still, it felt like there should be a rule that no one could cry around the birthday boy. At least not for the first couple hours after he woke up. Especially not his mother.

But he was eighteen and a man now, so he brushed the saline from the shoulder of his dress shirt before it could leave a mark, and spent another few minutes in front of the mirror, making sure that every crease was even. Every hair was aligned perfectly.

His mother had tried one last time to stop him as he passed through the door, not so much begging as trying desperately to hold herself together. Which was, in every way possible, worse than any begging she might have done. Kai tried to be reassuring, sending a jaunty wave behind him as he trotted down from the front porch.

“I’ll see you soon, Mom. I’m going to help people.”

She tried to smile through the streaming tears, and that was when the black-haired newly-minted adult turned back around and vowed to look forward. _It will be even worse later on. You have to be ready._ He tried to remind himself of the things that he had rehearsed last night.

The fist of resolve tightened in his chest.

His house was, thankfully, only a few blocks away from the main headquarters of the Amestrian military, so he was able to saunter his way over, new shoes clicking against the pavement and rubbing lightly against the back of his left heel.

Five minutes into the walk and he made a sharp turn onto the main road. Up ahead, he could see the grounds of the headquarters, filled with more milling people than usual. Kai followed the general flow of movement and soon found himself ferried inside. There were paper signs stuck to the walls of the corridors, peeling at the corners in the humidity, leading the crowd through turn after turn in what would have normally been a labyrinth of hallways.

The first week of June. Every year, on the first week of January and the first week of June, the doors to the Central military headquarters would open and allow a flood of civilians to traipse through its innards, until one by one they signed their lives into service of their country. Kai had been waiting for today ever since he had realized what it meant to be born on June third. He would be able to perform his duty for his country.

“-and you know that’s why he always sends you away this time of year.”

“Bastard. I can take care of myself. I just want to see the idiots about to sell their souls. It’s not like-.” Two men walked down the hall in the opposite direction that Kai was headed, clearly more at home here than the rest. Normally, he would have taken the time to stop and observe all that was around him, but Kai had been too preoccupied with navigation to notice the men until he registered their conversation, when one of them had almost run into him.

He turned to glance at their movements, but by the time he looked, they were already turning off at another intersection of hallways. All Kai managed to catch was the profile of a tall man with an absurd clump of hair sticking straight out from his forehead, and a glance of artificial light off gold. Something about the color seemed familiar. It reminded him of that Elric kid.

Now _that_ was something he hadn’t thought about for a while.

Hell, he probably hadn’t thought about either of the Elric boys since he had last been to Risembool. Kai remembered the walk he had taken two years ago, alone on the first night of his visit, as he reacquainted himself with the small town of his childhood.

He had meant for it to be a quick walk, and it had started out that way. But soon his legs had wandered off on autopilot, following old paths that used to be an everyday occurrence. He had just been investigating the bank of the stream-there was a little niche, out of the way of rain, that had been his fort for years-when he saw the unfamiliar, black scar marring the landscape in front of him. A quick jog up the hill had lead the then-sixteen-year-old to discover the remains of a house fire. A minute or two of consideration and Kai had remembered that the plot of land had once belonged to the Elric family. He assumed that this was no longer the case.

The Elric boys had been little terrors in town. It was one of Kai’s mother’s favorite stories to tell, how ‘sweet Trisha Elric’ had invited Kai over to play with her sons when they were only four and five and Kai was eight. How the boys had been ‘adorable little gremlins’, whining about how they didn’t _want_ to play with Kai. They wanted _Winry_. The only part of the story that Kai could actually recollect was the way Mrs. Elric had looked so embarrassed, and how she had eventually escorted Kai and his mother out, as apologies tumbled from her lips.

_And that_ , his mother always liked to conclude with, _is why not everyone is cut out to be a mother. You can be just the sweetest thing, and have absolutely no control over your children._

Kai had never really thought it necessary to tell her that it had been partly his fault. He had been the first one to dislike the Elrics. Spending one day trapped in a one-room schoolhouse with the boys would have been enough to make any eight year old jealous, and Kai had spent _years_ there. He had hated the way that they would sit in the back of class, either sleeping or talking about things that the teacher wasn’t teaching, in what sounded like a made-up language. The teacher would yell at them and try to get them to pay attention, but it was clear even to Kai’s eight-year-old mind that they didn’t need to.

So he may have shoved Ed down on the playground once or twice. Big deal. At least he had the good sense to avoid Al. Everyone in Risembool knew better than that. Eventually, the two boys teamed up with Winry Rockbell, the other town prodigy, and the three left the rest of the innocent children alone. A few years later, Kai and his parents had moved to Central, leaving the small-town life behind them.

So yeah, he might have been a little bit sad, standing in front of the charred remains of their house, but it was a very detached sort of sadness. The kind that made him wonder how Winry must be holding up, now that her two best friends were gone.

He figured it would be insensitive to ask, so he hadn’t said a word during his entire stay in Risembool.

The hallway ended in a set of double doors, and Kai abandoned his reminiscing in favor of making sure he did everything correctly. The final room was white-walled and clinical feeling, with rows of temporary chairs lined up to accommodate the unusually large crowd. On the opposite wall was another door, and one by one his fellow applicants were being called into the rooms beyond, presumably for their physical. A woman just inside the door was directing the flow of bodies, somehow ordering the new recruits into a single-file line and getting them to sit down in order.

“Name?” He pen was tapping rapidly against the thin wood of a clipboard.

“Kai Hauser.”

“Please take a seat in that chair.” She tilted her head to indicate the location while her pen jotted down his personal information.

He quickly sat, back straight and eyes forward. The heel of his left foot was now officially raw, and there was an itching pain where his new shoe met skin. He did not scratch it.

The non-entrance door opened, and revealed a figure all in black and red, rather than the expected white-coated doctor. For a moment, Kai stared. Because there was no way that this was Edward Elric. Edward Elric would have been a fifteen year old kid, with no reason to be here, if he had not died in a house fire over two years ago. But there was no mistaking the golden hair that matched the golden eyes. In all of his eighteen years, Kai had never met another human with that coloring. And, of course, only Ed had ever managed the pissy expression on the kid’s face as he went to lean against the only wall devoid of chairs, eyes scanning the faces of every man and woman there.

Kai was struggling to process.

He supposed that it had never actually been confirmed that Ed had died in the fire. He had always just assumed that was the case. But, seeing as he had never really said anything, no one had had the chance to correct him. Unsure what to really do now, Kai decided to wait until Ed glanced at his face, and allow the younger boy to make the first move.

When it finally happened, there was no flash of recognition. The eighteen-year-old correctly assumed that Ed only reacted to Kai because he had been staring so intensely back at him. There was a muscle that twitched under his right eye, something that Kai remembered meant an oncoming fight, learned from watching those too stupid to not pick on Al. Before anything could actually happen, Kai raised his palms in front of him. The universal I-mean-you-no-harm gesture.

“You need something?” It shouldn’t have been surprising, that the kid was already up in arms. He had always been a little be thoughtless when confronted with conflict.

“Edward Elric?” He had assumed that it was the best way to start a conversation. With a normal person it would have been a good way to acknowledge an old acquaintance. Ed’s eyes, however, sharpened into a cut-glass glare while he shifted to the balls of his feet, as if prepared to launch himself forward.

He’d always been a little bit weird. “Who wants to know?”

“Kai Hauser. I used to-.” The door that Ed had come through flew open and the man he had been with earlier came flying into the room. A lieutenant, Kai saw from his uniform. Green eyes behind wire-framed glasses latched onto the red coat draped across Ed’s shoulders, and the man sped across the room.

“Ed, we talked about this. He’s not just doing it to be sadistic. It’s for your own-.” Apparently already understanding what was happening, Ed rolled his eyes and turned to face the approaching man.

“If you say it’s for my own good, I will shatter your camera, Hughes. I swear I will.” That seemed to draw ‘Hughes’ up short, and he spared a moment to pout at the fifteen-year-old. Ed took advantage of the pause to continue. “Besides, it’s not what you think. I’m taking the time to catch up with an old friend.”

That caught Hughes’s attention, and in the next minute he was upon Kai like a leech. “Are you friends with Edward? It’s always nice to meet a friend of the Elrics. How did you meet? Would you like to see a picture of my daughter?”

Kai was still trying to figure out exactly what was going on when Ed swooped in to help. “He grew up with me in Risembool. I never thought I’d run into him here. We were about to go catch up at his house.” And before the two adults had time to think, Ed had grabbed Kai’s arm and was dragging him along, toward the door he had come from.

Only to find Lieutenant Hughes in the doorway. He looked disappointed. “Ed…”

“We’re just going to go catch up.” There was an edge of steel in Ed’s voice now, and he pushed the man out of his way. Hughes let him go, heaving a sigh after them.

Then the door closed and they were scurrying down a series of hallways and out into the sun. It took about half the time that Kai had spent getting in.

“So where are we going?”

“Your house.” Ed said it in a way that the _duh_ at the end was implied.

“But I’m joining the army today.” Somehow, Edward had managed to herd him around the side of the building toward the main gate.

“I could just kill you now. Or preform a lobotomy? It’d probably be faster.” That gave Kai pause. Was _Edward Elric_ against the military?

They were passing through a small gate next to the road into headquarters now, and a man in a corporal’s uniform stopped them. “Identification?”

Ed gave the man a look that made it seem as though he had never heard the word before. Kai decided to lend a hand. “I don’t think we can go this way, Ed. Let’s just go back out the main way.” But all he got for his efforts was a white glove waved in his face.

“I left it in my dorm. Can’t you just let me through?” As if that would work. This guy was clearly dedicated to his job.

“You know I can’t, Major Elric. But Colonel Mustang has asked that we remind you to check the pocket of your vest, if you forget your ID.”

Ed was a sudden tower of fury that kept Kai from really registering what had just been said. “Well you can remind that _bastard_ that he should check the door before he walks through it.” Gloved fingers yanked at the fabric of a black vest and wrested a silver pocket watch from the depths. The growling teenager practically threw it at the corporal’s face. “Can I go now?”

Kai just found the anger funny, but the man had shoved himself back into a corner, as if wary of what Elric would do.

“Sir. Yes sir.” The man in uniform stumbled through the words and raised a stuttering salute that Ed just snorted at as they passed through the gate and into the street.

“Come on. Which way is your house?” The question was barked out like a command, in a way that overrode the incomprehension in Kai’s mind and forced him into autopilot.

“Down this road. Turn right and it’s the second house on the left.”

The kid was still pissed off, if the spots of color high on his cheeks were anything to go by, and Kai left him to stew for a few seconds while he managed to reassemble his mind.

Edward Elric, childhood acquaintance, presumed dead, was alive. Check.

Not only was Edward seemingly in the military, but also appeared to be a major. Check.

Somehow Kai, who had been planning on simply enlisting today, was now being dragged back home, not yet signed up. Check.

“Wait. Why are we going to my house?” They were halfway up the front porch now, and it seemed like it was a bit too late to ask the question, but Kai needed to know. The change in subject seemed to knock Ed out of his anger, and at least there was that.

“To talk.” And with that, he shoved the door open and began to walk up the stairs, assuming that Kai would follow.

“Kai? Is that you?” His mother’s watery voice sounded from the living room, and that was really the last thing that Kai needed right now.

“Kai and I are just going to go hang out upstairs, Mrs. Hauser.” Ed’s voice was filled with sardonic amusement, as though the mere thought of hanging out was ridiculous to him.

“Oh.” Despite the confusion in her voice, Kai knew that his mother was probably already moving toward the kitchen to prepare a snack for them. She always had a habit of cooking when she was upset or confused. Kai started back down the stairs, wondering if maybe he could have handled the events earlier that morning a little better.

“Come _on_ Hauser. How were you expecting to join the military if you can’t even follow orders?” And so somehow he found himself upstairs and shoved into the first door Ed had opened at random. Which just happened to be his bedroom. For a moment, he sat and waited for Elric to say what he had been so eager to say, but the kid seemed to have completely run out of steam, leaning against the wall as he muttered to himself and drummed his left fingers against his leg.

“You needed to say something?”

He shook his head, as if to clear it, and then looked straight at Kai, his body tensed as if to take a huge leap. “Yeah. It’s just-.” He trailed off, struggling to find the words, and then seemed to just go for it. “Why the hell do you want to join the military?”

Ah. This was a question that just about everyone had already asked. Familiar territory.

“Because I want to help protect the country that I have lived in for the past eighteen years.”

Ed wrinkled his nose as if he smelt something rotten. “What did the country ever do for you?”

“Aside from house me, safely, for the past eighteen years?” Kai allowed a little of the judgment he was feeling towards Ed slip through. “I have people here that I care about, and I want to do everything in my power to make sure that they are as safe as possible.”

“Then get a gun license! Learn alchemy! Buy a guard dog!” Somehow, Ed’s rage had increased throughout the conversation. “Do you think that what you do in the military will actually be anything helpful? You’ll either get assigned to some useless post, die on the frontlines of a far-off battle, or end up being used to _start_ a war that will put your family in danger. If you want to help them than don’t trust the government to do it for you. Take up the responsibility and do it yourself!”

“I am taking responsibility. I’m about to sign my life away in service of my country. I know it’s not going to be all sunshine and daisies, but it’s the best way that I can think of to protect those I care about.”

“You’re being naïve, Kai.” And Ed’s eyes were filling with age. “The military is not some benevolent force. It is a monster that seeks out needless conflict, and it will chew you up and spit you out. And when you finish you’ll either be dead, or wish that you were.”

Kai was having a hard time matching what Ed was currently saying to his memory of the kid. “Is this all coming from Edward Elric? The kid who I once watched punch a teacher because they tried to make him drink milk?” Ed made to interrupt, but Kai talked over him. “No, you talked, now you listen. So you’ve had a few problems with the military in your time, I remember how upset you were after what happened to Winry’s parents-.”

“The Rockbells have nothing to _do_ with-.”

“Shut up. The military has done both helpful and hurtful things, but I truly believe that the good outweighs the bad, and I want to do my duty as a citizen of Amestris, and serve my country.”

As Kai had gone on, Ed had sunk down to the floor, so that he was now sitting against the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed, with his knees pulled up to his chest. As Kai finished talking, he seemed to rouse himself and gazed steadily into Kai’s eyes with his own wolf-like irises.

“This person that you are right now? The army will kill him. Whether you live or die, you are never in your life going to be as happy or as relaxed as you are in these last few days. That side of you will be the first to go.”

Did Ed think that he was being convincing? Kai had made up his mind ages ago and, while he was aware of the consequences, he knew that he was mentally and emotionally prepared for whatever was coming next. Honestly, Ed was just starting to piss him off.

“If you hate the army so much, why don’t you just leave it, _Major_ Elric?” And yeah, Kai had snapped, but Ed jerked like the words had been a slap. “Just because you can’t handle the trauma of war doesn’t mean that no one can. Get off your high horse. You’re just a kid who’s in way over his head. Maybe you should go back home, and leave affairs of state to the adults.”

“Screw you, Hauser.” Ed got to his feet, full of righteous indignation, but all Kai could see was a little kid, pretending to understand the world of adults. “I tried. Don’t let anyone tell you I didn’t. Go join your shitty military.” He was already out the door, and Kai could hear him clomping down the stairs. “We’ll see who was right a year from now.”

The front door slammed, with Kai halfway down the stairs, not really sure why he was following in the first place.

*~*~*

Three months later, Kai was standing on the parade ground at Central headquarters, sweating in his uniform and staring blank-faced out at the crowd of families. His mother was out there; she was the first one he had seen. But now he was staring at the boy on the edge of the crowd. The state alchemist with golden eyes, who was staring straight back at him, unblinking. For the first time, he looked a bit like a soldier.

After the ceremony, as Kai sought his mother out in the crowd, he stumbled on a divot in the concrete. Upon closer inspection, it looked like the imprint of a fist. At the entrance to headquarters, Kai saw the Lieutenant that had been with Ed three months ago was there now, a hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. But Ed shrugged it off, and pushed through the doors, entering the military building with his head low and his shoulders hunched, as if he were carrying a heavy burden.


End file.
